Teens playing with laser injure helicopter pilots

At that distance the beam has dispersed quite a bit and has hit more than enough particles of water and other stuff in the air as well as Rayleigh (sp?) scattering that I find the story somewhat unbelievable.

Your typical laser pointer is not collimated to the degree required to do damage at that distance, a few hundred feet and you're looking at a spot size way too large to do physical harm. It would still blind you for a bit and it's definitely irresponsible and illegal but that alone should be enough.

The chances of hitting both pilots in their left eye while their right eyes remain undamaged is interesting in itself, possibly they should do a control on this by testing other helicopter pilots directly after flight for similar symptoms when they've not been hit by a laser pointer.